4 Myths of building a new habit

Once again, I’m gonna talk about habits, but I’ll skip the definitions and how to build one because you can read about it in one of my older posts.

I guess you already read and watched tons of advice about forming a habit, so let’s take a look on the other side, meaning let’s take a look at myths of forming habits. Important to know if we want to take off some unnecessary pressure from our backs because we already have enough of our shit. ?

#1 It takes ____ days to form a habit

You’ve probably heard that it takes 21 or 30 or 66 or 90 days to form a habit, buuut… considering how our psyche is so challenging and unpredictable, of course, that would be silly to give a precise amount of time when would be able to say that we gave a birth to a new habit.

New studies say that it takes from 18 to 254 days to build a new habit. It depends on the type of the person, circumstances, possibilities and how demanding habit is by itself.

In one way is maybe frustrating of not knowing how much time it will take, but in another way, don’t blame yourself for not setting a new habit in 30 days. You’re not slow, you got your tempo.

#2 Miss one day, and you’re good for nothing

I believe that this is more of a subconscious justification to stop a hard program of forming a new habit. It is proven that missing one day in the process does nothing – it doesn’t make any difference in overall.

You’ve probably heard “Oh, I’ve missed one day. Gonna throw everything in the can, and sign up for being a useless human being.”. Common, don’t say that this is not an excuse to run away from the work.

Repetition of behavior is important, but you don’t need to beat yourself up just for missing a day occasionally.

#3 Cut off slowly

You want to stop eating 300 grams of sugar per day? Or you want to stop eating sugar in general?

Great possibility is that you gonna hear “cut it off slowly by lowering grams each day”. Maybe it will work, maybe it will suck. The thing is that it depends on your personality and body.

If cutting things slowly doesn’t help, try to severely stop eating chocolate. One day you eat 3 chocolates, the other day none, and you stick to none. Personally, this method works for me. It’s a strong possibility that you’re going to have cravings for some period of time, but after that, you’re free.

#4 We are all the same

Ahahaha no! We would be all way more productive if we would have the same formula for everybody. Each one of us acts and reacts differently, so any kind of advice doesn’t mean that it will work for you.

One thing is for sure, we are never bored while exploring what works for us (and while crying how we can’t handle our flaws 😀 oh the beauty of life 😀 ). We get bored when we give up on everything.